Pope Benedict arrives in Mexico seven days before campaigns kick off for the July 1 presidential elections. Such a visit would have been unthinkable a generation ago in a nation where references to Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico's patroness, have been enough to annul elections.
The visit also comes as the Mexican Senate debates constitutional changes that would guarantee the right to hold religious services outside authorized places of worship.
Catholic leaders caution against reading too much into the timing of the trip. They say the pope's agenda has nothing to do with domestic politics.
Priest Jorge Raúl Villegas, spokesman for the Archdiocese of León, expects the pope's message to be "encouraging" for a country where a war on drug cartels and organized crime has claimed about 47,000 lives in five years. The crackdown has caused controversy for the church: Some parishes accept "narcolimosnas," or drug alms, from cartels for charitable work.
NEW YORK: Oil dropped nearly 2 percent as Saudi Arabia sought to knock back the price rise that has threatened the global economy, with the oil minister offering the most detailed argument to date that OPEC nation was prepared to meet any supply shortfalls.
Brent crude settled at $124.12 a barrel, down $1.59 on the day and off earlier lows of $123.20. US crude fell $2.48 to settle at $105.61 a barrel.
Prices dropped after the Kingdom sought to soothe fears about high oil prices, saying that world supplies were well in excess of demand and that $125-a-barrel crude prices were not justified given the anemic state of the world economy.
Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Ali Al-Naimi said the Kingdom had satisfied all of its customers' requests for oil and stood ready to raise output to full capacity of 12.5 million barrels per day (bpd), if needed.
"I want to assure you that there is no shortage of supply in the market," Al-Naimi told reporters at a press briefing in Doha, Qatar. "We are ready and willing to put more oil on the market, but you need a buyer."
Oil is trading above $123, just $24 short of an all-time high, as tighter Western sanctions on Iran threaten to slow the country's exports.
"Oil prices today are unjustifiable on a supply and demand basis," said Al-Naimi. "We really don't understand why the prices are behaving the way they are."
Sure you do, you just can't say it out loud...
He said supply of oil was now out-pacing demand by more than 1 million bpd and that customers were not asking for extra crude.
"From our point of view, we have had no customer not satisfied. We have satisfied every request for every customer that has come asking," said Naimi.
"We ask the customers, 'Do you need more?' and invariably the answer is 'No thank you.'"
Riyadh is now pumping 9.9 million bpd the highest in decades and is willing to produce at full capacity of 12.5 million bpd immediately, should demand warrant, Al-Naimi said. He said he expected output next month to stay at 9.9 million bpd. Saudi spare production capacity now stands at 2.5 million bpd, he said.
"We spent a lot of money building that capacity. We finished building it in 2009, and it is there to be used," said Al-Naimi.
Storage inside the kingdom was full and Riyadh was holding about 10 million barrels outside of Saudi Arabia in Rotterdam, Sidi Kerir and Okinawa, he said. "Our inventories both in Saudi Arabia and worldwide are full."
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/21/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
None of these political explanations makes sense. Too many fiat currencies in competitive devaluation pursuing too little oil is the closest decent explanation. From our point of view, we have had no customer not satisfied. They never asked me. I want my gasoline for 50% less than it is currently selling for.
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Supreme Court Rules Unanimously Against EPA Strong-Arming of Regulated Parties
Damon W. Root | March 21, 2012
The Supreme Court handed down a major win for both property rights and due process rights today in the case of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency. At issue was the EPAs use of so-called administrative compliance orders, which are government commands that allowed the agency to regulate the use of private property without also subjecting its actions to judicial review. In a 9-0 ruling, with the majority opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia and separate concurring opinions filed by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court declared that these EPA actions must be subject to judicial review.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/21/2012 12:17 ||
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Israeli army weekly Bamahane will be required to send its articles to the chief education officer for approval before publication, after senior officers were outraged by an article in the Purim issue about soldiers dressing up as women and performing as drag queens when off duty.
The officers were particularly infuriated by a photo of an Armored Corps officer wearing a gas mask and red boots with heels. The article interviewed two soldiers in drag, who claimed that the phenomenon could be found in many Israel Defense Forces units, including elite intelligence Unit 8200.
Bamahane has written liberally about homosexuals in the army. Some articles have drawn fire, while others have been published without controversy.
In 2001, for example, then Chief Education Officer Elazar Stern blocked publication of an edition with a cover story that featured a picture of a colonel holding the rainbow flag under the headline, "This is how I came out of the closet."
Stern shut down the paper for a week. He said, "I closed Bamahane because publishing a cover story like that in the paper coming out before Memorial Day was tasteless."
Similarly, a story for Family Day in 2010 on a lesbian couple drew fire over the type of family the newspaper chose to portray. By contrast, a lengthy article on five homosexual soldiers serving in combat units that came out for Gay Pride Week in 2011 generated no criticism at all.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
NEW YORK: Oil dropped nearly 2 percent as Saudi Arabia sought to knock back the price rise that has threatened the global economy, with the oil minister offering the most detailed argument to date that OPEC nation was prepared to meet any supply shortfalls.
Israeli army weekly Bamahane will be required to send its articles to the chief education officer for approval before publication, after senior officers were outraged by an article in the Purim issue about soldiers dressing up as women and performing as drag queens when off duty.
